World domination
Runner is taking on the extreme challenge in effort to raise funds for local nonprofit
It’s not hard to find a charity 5K or fun run in Houston any given weekend, where those who are willing to wake up early on a Saturday morning raise money for causes important to their community. But then there’s Dorn Wenninger. Wenninger is also running for charity — seven marathons on seven continents in seven days, to be exact.
Last Monday, Wenninger and 50 other extreme runners boarded a Ilyushin 76 plane, flew six hours south from Cape Town, South Africa, and landed at the Russian Novolazarevskaya Station in Antarctica for the first leg of the epic run that took place Tuesday.
Wenninger would join the storied ranks of a select number of people who have completed a marathon on every continent. The trademarked 7 Continents Marathon Club boasts 223 members who have accomplished the feat.
Through the World Marathon Challenge, Wenninger, a 49-yearold Walmart executive in Mexico City, is aiming to raise $99,000 for Amigos de las Americas, a leadership nonprofit based in Houston that offers cultural immersion programs for teens and young adults in Latin America.
“I’m running around the world, literally, to bring awareness to all of the values that AMIGOS represents,” Wenninger said. “I’m fortunate and grateful to AMIGOS for being the foundation of the person that I am today.”
Wenninger, who grew up in Ohio, took his first trip abroad at 16 in 1984 through AMIGOS, when he volunteered in a village near Michoacan, Mexico, building latrines to promote public health. For the next six years, he rose through the ranks of AMIGOS’ summer program in Mexico, Ecuador, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic.
Wenninger has now lived in or visited 98 countries, serves on AMIGOS’ board of directors, led the Ohio chapter as training director and served on the organization’s international board. “(Wenninger) has contributed extraordinary business experience to the board of directors and served as an adviser to our executive leadership,” said AMIGOS president and CEO Sara Nathan. “He has sought corporate investment and is a tireless advocate for AMIGOS’ work in empowering young people to solve the world’s greatest problems.”
The money raised by Wenninger, more than $28,000 so far, will go to providing financial aid to applicants hoping to travel with the program, 30 percent of whom receive need-based assistance, Nathan said.
The World Marathon Challenge, an annual event, shuttles this year’s 51 participants from 10 countries to the “Novo” station, Cape Town, Perth, Dubai, Lisbon and Cartagena before the final race in Miami on Monday. The idea, Wenninger said, is to complete the seven marathons in 168 hours, 52 of which are spent flying from location to location.
Successful participants are recognized by the Intercontinental Marathon Club, one of several clubs representing athletes who run marathons all over the world.
Running, Wenninger said, is in his DNA. A child of two avid marathon runners, he ran his first long-haul race at 12 and ran cross-country through middle and high school.
“It was only 9 miles,” he said. “But that’s a long way for a 12-year-old.”
In 2015, Wenninger won a marathon in the North Pole, an environment not completely dissimilar to the Antarctic marathon he completed last week in four hours and 21 minutes. A veteran extreme athlete, Wenninger’s training regimen consists, simply, of running.
“I run by myself, with no music,” he said. “It’s better if you’re in nature. It helps with thinking, it’s therapeutic.”
In the lead-up to the weeklong test of stamina and physical strength, Wenninger documented his training runs and swims on his Instagram page — 6,200-meter swims on his lunch break, 20-mile runs before his two daughters have had breakfast, training runs at upwards of 13,000 feet above sea level near his home in Mexico City.
In the estimated 400 hours he spent training over the course of a year for the World Marathon
Challenge, Wenninger ran upwards of 2,000 miles and swam more than 100 miles.
“I always run to push myself and remind myself that you’re capable of being way more than you think,” he said.
In all, Wenninger’s hopes for the marathon are simple enough: to spread cultural awareness and raise money for future explorers to immerse themselves in other cultures; and to join the coveted ranks of those few runners who can say they finished marathons in every continent.
“Some goals seem ridiculous and seem audacious,” Wenninger said. “But you start tackling them and you find anything is possible.”